History, legends and lesssons of The Cumberland Plateau, Tennessee,
Fentress County, and Clarkrange

Tennessee Mountain Stories Blog

Beth Durham shares stories from her family and neighbors on the Cumberland Plateau - specifically, Clarkrange, TN. All of the Tennessee Mountain heritage is fair game, though! Looking for the legends that didn't make the history books and the lessons we can learn from them.

Tennessee Mountain Stories

I don’t usually give much thought to whether my children have a Southern accent or use mountain-terminology. I guess they sound pretty much like me and all my people so it’s just normal. But you know that I’m fascinated with the Appalachian vernacular, we’ve talked about there here before.

A blog I enjoy reading (The Blind Pig) regularly shares Southern-English terms. I’m often shocked to read words or phrases there that I thought were just regular English.

So when my daughter recently began adding “right quick” to both requests and observations I kind of did a double-take. The first time it was something like, “Get me some juice right quick.” Well you can imagine that brought on more talk – we don’t tell Mama to hop to things, we don’t even order Mama to get the juice.

However, it isn’t just the demands of a little diva. While watching an old Western where the good guy was tied up she said, “He’s gonna’ get loose right quick.”

Where did this come from? I didn’t realize that I used the phrase, although I suppose I do ask the children to ‘come here right quick’ or ‘pick that up right quick’. I asked some family around me if they routinely say this and no one admits to it.

It’s always amazing to me the things little children pick up on – and I’m sure glad we are not a family that’s ever accepted ugly language in our home because you can bet they’d pick up on that too! So I guess listening to them will be a bit of a mirror on our dialect.

So what do you think? Is right quick widely used or is this a mountain-ism?

Beth Durham

Beth Durham shares Tennessee history through stories! Drawing from legends and oral history from the Cumberland Plateau, Fentress County, Clarkrange, and all of Tennessee, you’ll find the history that didn't make it into the text books. It's the living history, and the lessons we can learn from it.

If you love the Tennessee mountains, the people of Tennesee and the culture of yesteryear, you'll enjoy Beth’s books and blog.

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